Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Reverse Engineering

Moore's Law predicts life originated billions of years before EarthRobert T. Gonzalez, 04.18.13
A new study co-authored by a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health concludes that life originated elsewhere in the Universe around 9.8 billion years ago – roughly five-billion years before the Earth was even formed.

...origin of life can be estimated by examining genetic complexity through the lens of Moore's Law and backtracking to some point of temporal origin.

"Genome complexity reaches zero, which corresponds to just one base pair, at time ca. 9.7 billion years ago... ±2.5 billion years."

Earth is on the order of just 4.5-billion years old. Ipso facto, say the researchers, life originated somewhere besides Earth, evolving not on a geologic time scale, but a cosmic one.

[crit, i09.com]
One thing that worries me about this paper is that it makes no effort, as far as I can tell, to distinguish between complexity and progress, an important distinction that many people fail to recognize.

Another issue: the idea that the complexity of life on Earth has increased at the same rate throughout history is highly suspect.

About Me

First things first, that's not a picture of me, although it could be any one of us. It's a painting by Alex Grey.
Next, the blog Limbic Signal is an extension of my book Hidden Scents, and the blog Network Address is a personal archive that I like to keep online for easy access.
Last, I'm a thirty-something male from Suburbia, New Jersey, a high school visual arts instructor, independent researcher, and writer.
Hidden Scents The Language of Smell in the Age of Approximation is my first attempt at authoring a work of non-fiction, and serves as a response to the dearth of information on the topic of Smell.